Powergrid's Experience on Best o&M International Practices

Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. (POWERGRID) operate and maintain about 1, 51, 300 circuit kilometres of overhead EHV transmission lines spread over the length and breadth of the country involving about 2, 70, 000 no. of various configuration of towers. To operate such a huge network, inspection of each tower is to be carried out at a regular interval by skilled manpower for identification of any defects like missing (theft) tower members, damage to foundation/conductor/hardware/insulator, hotspots/infringing vegetation growth etc.

Manual inspection of transmission line towers is becoming more and more difficult due to large network coupled with difficult terrains across the country. For maintaining the large transmission network effectively, POWERGRID has adopted best O&M international practices like aerial patrolling of transmission lines using LIDAR (Light Detection & Ranging), thermal/corona & high-resolution photographs, GIS mapping and application based patrolling which are reliable and cost effective.